This invention relates generally to an improved nail transfer apparatus for use in connection with high-speed nail guns. The disclosed invention may efficiently transfer bulk nails in high speed applications where reliability of transfer is required.
Automatic nail guns are commonly used in the building and manufacturing industries. Typically through pneumatic actuation, a large number of nails are driven quickly into a work surface. For many nail gun applications, a gravity feed mechanism is sufficient to feed nails into a nail gun. In these devices, nails are fed by a tube or magazine into the nail gun by gravity. The limitations include the speed at which gravity feeds the nails and the reliability of having a nail in position to be loaded into the nail gun. Alternatively, the nails may be spring loaded into a magazine. In this way, the nails are pushed towards the firing chamber in the gun by a spring. This alternative results in down time of the gun when the magazine is switched out or reloaded.
For high speed applications, gravity feed or spring loaded mechanisms may not be effective. A gravity feed nail source may not be fast enough, and the spring load nail source may cause disruptions since it must be regularly reloaded. The solution to these problems has been to attach the nails together. For instance, a long row of nails may be tacked directly to each other into "sticks " of nails. Alternatively, there are collated nails in which the nails are tacked to a wire in a long coil. In either case, nails can be transferred and drawn quickly and reliably into the firing chamber of the nail gun.
Functionally, the use of collated nails or sticks of nails is effective. Economically, however, these nails are relatively more expensive than bulk or loose nails. For high volume manufacturing applications such as pallet making, the cost of nails can be substantial. Also, in each case, the source of nails must be periodically reloaded with a magazine of connected nails. Whenever reloading is required, the manufacturing process must be temporarily suspended.